


Don’t let my show convince you

by belmanoir



Series: The road to romance [1]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 16:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11993367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: That might be all that kept him in control tonight in the face of Brian Kendrick’s ridicule: even if Kendrick looked at him and saw a clown, he knew Ariya was looking at him and seeing someone he wanted to fuck.Set after the 8/29/17 episode of 205 Live.





	Don’t let my show convince you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrs_laugh_track](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_laugh_track/gifts).



Ariya speeds on the way home, eyes grimly on the road ahead. Usually Jack would fuss, but tonight he stares grimly at the road too, flinching silently when Ariya takes a corner too fast and almost hits a stop sign.

 _I can’t tell if you’re reckless or just a bad driver._ The light words spring to mind out of habit. He doesn’t say them. Just now they might seem pointed.

Jack took a beating tonight, but his pride didn’t. Ariya got rolled up _and_ ate a detonation kick. Jack should be supportive and try to make him smile.

He manages a terse, “Sorry about your match.” _I’m sure Hassan Yazdani would have been terribly proud of everything up to the point where you tried to hit your opponent with his friend’s crutch._ But Jack’s not in the mood to twit Ariya about being a scoundrel tonight.

Ariya makes a noncommittal noise. “Do we need to pick up a prescription?”

“No, Tylenol will suffice. I have some at the hotel. Thanks.”

He grunts. “I should break TJP’s knee for real.”

The subject change isn’t hard to follow. The first time Ariya saw Jack on painkillers was when TJP worked over his knee.

Or Ariya’s been focused on his match the whole time, and the subject never really changed to begin with.

“Did you want to come out?” Jack says suddenly. “When Brian Kendrick brought out the bell?” It’s not what he _really_ wants to ask, but he’s trying not to be needy and he can’t face a “no” tonight. Ariya’s scowling profile is absurdly attractive, cast in shadow and then in brief shifting light by the street lights.

Ariya glances at him. “Did you want me to?” He sounds surprised.

“No.” Jack chuckles mirthlessly. “But I do want you to have wanted to. I didn’t say it was logical.”

Ariya looks even more surprised. Doesn’t he know? Jack feels guilty suddenly. Hasn’t Jack ever told him?

A long, awkward silence. Maybe rescuing Jack honestly never occurred to Ariya. But he’s protective in his own understated way, isn’t he? He checked on Jack in the trainer’s room before his match, eyed his bandage darkly, and kissed him when the doctor left the room. Jack doesn’t know why Ariya would bother if he didn’t care. Yes, the sex is lovely, but if it’s just a shag, Ariya could probably bag someone more his type with a minimum of effort.

_Not helpful, brain._

Maybe he just thinks Jack is self-sufficient. Jack wishes that were true, and not a carefully constructed charade.

“Yes,” Ariya says gruffly, and leaves it at that. He looks more relaxed now he’s spit the word out. The corner of his mouth quirks up a little. “You were a scoundrel tonight.”

There’s no denying that Brian Kendrick has successfully dragged Jack down to his level. He must be so pleased. Jack has been suffering paroxysms of mortified guilt about that clown. 

Not right now, though. Right now, he slouches a little in his seat and smiles at Ariya. “Did you like it?”

The appreciative, hungry sound Ariya makes is balm to Jack’s battered self-regard. “I liked when you took your suspenders off.”

Jack’s smile spreads across his face. “I thought you might.” 

The bitter truth is, Jack craves approval, and he craves Ariya’s more than most. That might be all that kept him in control tonight in the face of Brian Kendrick’s ridicule: even if Kendrick looked at him and saw a clown, he knew Ariya was looking at him and seeing someone he wanted to fuck. 

Knowing his brutality was turning Ariya on, he could bear to disappoint the crowd, who count on him to be a gentleman. But they weren’t disappointed after all. They cheered. Jack wishes he felt ashamed. 

“I thought about you when I dressed for the match.” It’s dirty talk, so that’s not being needy. “I’ve been thinking about you all night.”

Ariya floors it. It’s alarming, but it thrills him too: Ariya is impatient. He’s as eager to get to the room as Jack is. 

Ariya tossed his expensive shirt in the backseat as soon as they got in the car. He’s driving in a black undershirt. The streetlights slide over his sculpted shoulders like...oh, Jack doesn’t know, like the night’s tongue or something. He lacks the wherewithal to be poetic at the moment. Ariya screeches into a parking spot, halfway over the line, and Jack gets out and takes his suitcase without a word. 

In the room, Jack tosses his jacket over a chair, rolls up his sleeves, and makes sure Ariya is looking before he snaps his suspenders off. Shoving Ariya onto the bed, he swiftly straddles him. 

Ariya braces himself like he expects a punch in the face, and suddenly Jack remembers straddling Brian Kendrick on the announce desk just like this. Ariya doesn’t say, _Don’t punch me in the face,_ though, or put up his hands. Is that not off the table? Something hot and desperate and grateful wells up in Jack’s chest. _I’m afraid to let you hurt me,_ he thinks. _But I want to._

He unzips Ariya’s pants, then his own. Wrapping both hands tight around their cocks, he almost sobs with relief. Something that feels unequivocally good, Ariya thrusting and sliding against him, pleasure and a defined goal, an endpoint. Oh, damn, Ariya’s circumcised, he can’t do this dry. Jack doesn’t want to stop.

Ariya doesn’t say anything, though. He leans back on his elbows and stares silently into Jack’s eyes, breathing loudly through his nose. Christ, he’s attractive.

Jack spits in one hand, hoping it doesn’t kill the erotically menacing atmosphere. Now everything is slippery. Even better. The slick head of Ariya’s cock bumps over his. “Take your shirt off.” 

Ariya’s a body guy; he looks deeply satisfied by the request. Jack hides a smile. 

Yanking the tank top over his head, Ariya bares the best torso in the cruiserweight division. Muscular, but not shading into strongman kitsch, brown and well-proportioned and beautiful as hell. Jack quashes a twinge of insecurity. Ariya wouldn’t be letting Jack jerk off to his chest if he wasn’t attracted to him.

Breath shuddering, Ariya covers Jack’s hand with his own, changing the rhythm—fast at first and then a few long strokes before he squeezes his eyes shut and comes silently.

Ariya is definitely attracted to him.

Pulling out of the channel of their hands, Ariya flops back on the bed. Wiping one hand on the sheet, Jack goes on with the other. Now he really is just jerking off to Ariya’s chest, which makes him self-conscious. He’s also smearing Ariya’s cum over his cock, a tawdry circumstance which excites him. 

“What do you want?” Ariya asks, noticing his hesitation. It always startles him when Ariya guesses his thoughts. 

What does he want? He wants...

He wants Ariya to drive him wild, just by existing, and give him that hot unreadable stare that could mean anything. He wants the humiliation of his pathetic longing laid bare, seen, understood. 

So—more or less what he has, probably.

“What are you thinking?” Jack demands, surprised at himself. Afraid of the answer. “What do you see when you look at me?” 

So much for not being needy. But the answer will turn him on even if it’s _You should tan_. Maybe especially if it is. It’ll eat him up later, but it’ll turn him on now. The exquisite, rare pleasure of allowing _this feels good_ to supercede _You look like a fool_. He grits his teeth. Almost there.

Ariya laughs. “I see someone who can’t shut up even when he’s fucking.” He knits his fingers behind his head, stretching. His hips arch beneath Jack. “I see someone who’s fishing for a compliment.”

Precisely. Jack presses his forehead into Ariya’s shoulder. “Please,” he begs, hand working furiously. 

He feels Ariya brush his hair away from his forehead to reveal his neat bandage. “Brian Kendrick really got in your head, didn’t he?” He smooths his thumb over the surgical tape. “I see a future Cruiserweight Champion.”

It’s not the reassurance he was looking for, but it’s better, it sweeps over him in a hot rush. He wraps his hand around Ariya’s bicep and squeezes.

Ariya’s skin is warm and smooth and patient, allowing him liberties. Jack’s knuckles bump across his abs. He presses his face flat into Ariya’s shoulder, holding his breath as long as he can. Ariya smells like sweat and cheap soap. Jack tried to take shortcuts like that too, back when he first decided to become a gentleman. He’ll give Ariya a bottle of the good stuff. He’ll find an occasion that won’t seem overeager. A birthday would be ideal, but it’s not until April. Christmas would be tactless—

Ariya lays a casual hand on his arse and squeezes. Jack gasps and spills across Ariya’s stomach.

He doesn’t want to roll away, afterwards. But he does, gazing up at the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ariya wipe himself clean with his tank top and drop it on the floor.

Jack tries to imagine being alone in the room, or politely sharing with Gran Metalik. “I don’t know if I could do this without you,” he blurts out.

There’s a long pause. Ariya turns his head to look at him, considering. Eventually, he shrugs. “I’m right here.”

Jack feels ashamed. The words he hasn’t said are making him squirrelly. He keeps almost saying them, or asking Ariya to, in ways that are probably more annoying, more encroaching, than just coming out with it. 

He probably _should_ just come out with it. Maybe Ariya wouldn’t even blink, surprised, and say _Thank you._

But maybe he would. 

“I’m homesick,” Jack tries to explain. Is that insulting? He doesn’t mean that anyone would do as well.

“Me too.”

Jack laughs. “You’re from Minnesota.”

“Yeah,” Ariya says, annoyed. “I miss Minnesota.”

“Fair enough.” Jack tries to decide whether to take his trousers off, or fasten them again. 

In England no one really took him for a gentleman. No one thought he meant them to. In America his act is different in ways he hadn’t expected. “I feel as though...I used to be telling a joke everyone got, and now there’s this confused silence.”

Ariya frowns. “The crowd wasn’t silent for your match. People love you.”

_Do you?_

“What is it like not to want people to like you?” It’s one of those things you only say because it’s dark and your head hurts and you just had an orgasm. One of those things you’ll cringe about tomorrow.

“I want people to like me,” Ariya says flatly. “I just gave up on it.”

Jack’s heart bursts open, bleeding all over his dress shirt. 

He knows Ariya doesn’t fully take his meaning, can’t imagine the cold gaping hole inside Jack, needing to be filled with other people’s warm laughter. Jack could never give up. _Tears of a clown,_ he tells himself derisively. _Think about someone else for a sec, can’t you?_

“I like you,” he says, an unconscionable understatement. “I liked you straightaway, the moment I saw you.” At first sight, even. “I’m sorry. My question was unforgivably presumptuous.”

“You’re such a weirdo.” Smiling, Ariya scoops Jack up and drops him back on his chest. For once, he looks boyishly happy. “The moment I saw you, I thought you were a big weirdo.”

“It’s my stock in trade,” Jack admits, wondering whether his mustache is doing anything unfortunate.

“How’s your head?”

Jack pauses, pretending to consider. “Bludgeoned.” He rolls into the curve of Ariya’s arm. Not quite cuddling. Just lying very close. Ariya doesn’t seem to mind. “Who are you going to dedicate your match to next week?”

Ariya enthusiastically holding forth about Iranian wrestling makes for a splendid bedtime story. Jack listens carefully, so he can repeat it back later and Ariya won’t think he doesn’t pay attention. He lets everything else go. 

Ariya’s voice.

The curve of Ariya’s arm.

Wrestling facts.

The world is kind, sometimes, and welcoming. Jack lets himself be welcomed. Just for now.


End file.
